


Lean Season, or, Whatever Happened to Daniel Day-Lewis?

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Munchausen by Proxy, Consensual Non-Consent, Consensual Somnophilia, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Dr. Frederick Chilton, known to the press only as "Buffalo Bill," has been relentlessly pursuing Hannibal Lecter across the globe in an effort to harvest his skin for surgical skin grafts.After killing his way through a whole host of Hannibal's old school friends, he finally finds him.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Lean Season, or, Whatever Happened to Daniel Day-Lewis?

Interior. Doctor’s office. Night.

Bill wonders when he started thinking like that. _Interior. Doctor’s office. Night._ The air smells like disinfectant and bad coffee and he can hear the sound of pattering rain behind the curtains. It’s late, and everyone’s tired. He’s the last man left in the waiting room.

 _Interior,_ he thinks, dismayed. _Doctor’s office. Night._

Bill made an appointment for late in the day on purpose. He wanted to be the last one left. The waiting room is cramped and claustrophobic, even with the chairs spaced out, and the wobbly plastic table in the corner is still laden with scattered building blocks and coloring books from the day’s children. The walls are vacant except for a single Gary Larson comic in a plastic frame.

“Sorry for the wait,” says the woman at the desk. She adjusts her glasses so they don’t fog and leans in towards the screen of her desktop PC. “He’ll see you in Room 2, Mister . . ?”

“Doctor,” says Bill. He doesn’t elaborate.

Standing is an ordeal. He lifts himself from his seat with a groan and shuffles down the hallway like an old man. The door to Room 2 is ajar. Bill nudges it open with his elbow and Dr. Laslow turns in his chair, squinting up at him from behind his coke bottle glasses. Some distantly amused corner of Bill’s brain enjoys the absurdity of a squinting optometrist.

“Jesus,” says Dr. Laslow. Then, “Oh dear, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“No, no,” Bill waves off the apology. “I’m used to it.”

Dr. Laslow looks mortified. He gives his head a little shake, and looks down at his clipboard. “Yes, well. Erm. Have a seat. There’s no need to remove the bandages.”

Bill leans back in the examination chair and takes off his sunglasses. He gazes mildly up at the ceiling. “I’d like to get a prescription for some lenses. My eyes aren’t what they were.”

Dr. Laslow mumbles idly to himself before setting his clipboard down. “Alright,” he says, picking up his penlight. “Let’s have a look at you then.”

He’s not as tired as he looks. Even Bill can tell. Dr. Laslow is a stooped, heavyset man with hair thinning to baldness, but his eyes betray a youthful gleam that suggests a rich interior life. He’s wearing a white coat, an irregularity in optometrists. He has to lean over Bill’s body to see his eyes.

“I wonder if you could tell me anything about a client of yours,” Bill says as the penlight passes over his pupils.

“Good God,” says Dr. Laslow, not listening. “You’ve got an eye out.”

He says it with a little disgust, a little wonder. Bill’s smile widens under his bandages. He taps one gloved fingertip on the glass surface of his eye. “Not bad, eh?” he says. “Surprised you didn’t notice when I walked in. But I suppose, behind the sunglasses . . .”

Dr. Laslow clicks his penlight off and steps back, hands on his hips, assessing. “Client,” he repeats, processing what he’s heard. “Client. No, I’m afraid that’s entirely out of the question.”

“Is that right?” says Bill. He sits up and swings his legs down from the seat. He flips open his wallet and removes a polaroid, holding it out. “He would’ve looked something like this, here with a man ten, maybe fifteen years his junior.”

Dr. Laslow glances down at the picture. He looks up sharply. “Where did you get that?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Tell me.”

“I said don’t worry about it,” says Bill. “This is you, isn’t it?”

And it is, though he looks many years younger. It’s a polaroid taken at some blurry college function, a lot of rich children with stains on their starched white shirts. Dr. Laslow is seated on a low stone wall outside someone’s home with a messy collection of other young men. Bill’s had ample opportunity to study their faces. There’s the young Dr. Sutcliffe, with his mouth open as though halfway through a punchline. There’s Dr. Madison with his downcast eyes, hiding his face from the camera. And there, on the end, sitting cool and straight and still . . .

“If you’re here to talk to me about Hannibal goddamn Lecter, I haven’t seen him since we were at school,” says Dr. Laslow, real anger in his voice now. He slaps the polaroid out of Bill’s gloved hand. It flutters to the ground. “For _fuck’s_ sake. You people have no shame, do you?”

His eyes are wide and watery. _Ugly,_ Bill thinks, a little hysterically. Far be it from Bill to call any man ugly. He hops off the table and advances on Dr. Laslow, who, still talking, forgets to take a step back.

“You come around,” he snarls, stabbing his finger at Bill’s chest, “trying to dig up bad memories that are better left buried. I’m not telling you or that Tattlecrime bitch a goddamn thing so how about you get out of my office.”

Bill’s not a fighter, never has been. He walks with a cane and a limp. He is in constant pain, his body aching and pinching and stretching in the wrong places, making him feel like at any moment his seams will split and everything inside him will spill out like so much teddy bear fluff.

Still, he killed the others. Dr. Laslow is breathing heavily and he’s out of shape. Not fit like the others. Not like the others at all.

“Since you were at school, eh?” says Bill. He’s been practicing a dry little twist in his voice for just such a moment. Sam Spade, old-time radio. “Because I have it on good authority that you had an appointment just three months ago, in the company of,” he produces another picture, this one printed on cheap magazine paper, “this man. Now you’re gonna tell me absolutely everything you know.”

Dr. Laslow looks down. He can’t help himself. “That’s Will Graham,” he says slowly.

“It sure is, buddy,” says Bill. He smiles. It’s a slight stretching of the skin around his lipless mouth. “Say . . . are you about a size fourteen?”

Every night at the stroke of eleven, when dawn is a theory and Will Graham’s thoughts feel as black and creeping as an oil spill, he walks out onto the moor and looks at the moon.

He takes his dogs with him. Three wolfish animals with shaggy fur and lolling tongues. They lope through the heather at his heels, nose down and snuffling or head raised, drooling. Graham keeps them hungry, which keeps them affectionate. Sometimes he lets them out to catch rabbits. It’s been a very lean season.

The old farmhouse looks weatherbeaten and exposed out on the hillside, surrounded by miles and miles of cold, gray English moor. Looking back on it now, with the long grass rippling like water and the wind tugging at his coat, Graham imagines that the candlelit windows make it look like a boat on the sea. Whale oil and lantern grease. A porch light left on in the rain.

He feels safe.

One of the dogs pushes its head into his palm and he pets it idly, watching the golden light flicker in the distance. It’s a sour night. A night when anyone with any sense is at home in bed. Graham can smell the storm clouds rolling in, bringing with them wind and the threat of rain. But his thoughts are quiet, and his mind is clear. He sweeps his windswept hair out of his face with one hand and looks out towards the distant road, visible only indistinctly in the feeble moonlight. The copse of trees that fans around it looks like it’s moving. _Fear not, till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane,_ thinks Graham, in another man’s voice.

The shadow of the trees fails to hide the headlights of a car creeping silently up the road. The uncertain crawl of a driver unused to driving on the left. Graham, overlooking the moor with the long grass whipping at his legs and his dogs staring glassy-eyed at the moon, watches as the car slows almost to a standstill. They’ve seen the house, then. The lit windows in the dark. They’ve probably even seen the old black car parked outside it.

Graham makes no effort to hide himself or turn back to the house. He puts his hands in his coat pockets and watches as the stranger cuts the engine, plunging the copse back into darkness. No one drives down this road anymore. Especially at this time of year.

The idea of being caught pecks idly at the back of Graham’s mind like a crow pecking at roadkill. The thought doesn’t induce panic, grief, or glee. It’s not enough to really frighten him.

Graham stands silently and watches the shadow of the trees. He can’t see the car anymore, but he can see movement in the darkness. The car door opens and closes. He watches the distant figure stop by the roadside, looking up the hill at him. Graham knows he’s been seen.

He raises one hand. Almost a wave. The stranger raises his hand too, and then starts lurching laboriously up the hill towards him. He walks slowly, with a cane. Graham turns his back on him and leaves him to his limping.

The dogs follow him, loping shaggy and wolf-like through the brush, as he walks back to the farmhouse. It’s a good distance away now, and as it gets closer Graham can see the candlelight flickering as the wind rattles the windows. It’s not the worst place he’s stayed these past few years. He’s grown very fond of it. Strange to think that after Hannibal had taken him up to the highest point of the temple and shown him all the exotic places of the world spread out before him, he’d ended up here. Lying low in a farmhouse in dry old England, waiting out the plague like something out of the _Decameron_.

At this late hour the moor gives rise to mist. It curls up from the earth and clings to the hills like cobwebs. Graham’s hand rests upon the doorframe and he looks over his shoulder before he unlocks the door. There is the lurching stranger, far behind him now but still approaching. Relentless and single-minded. Hungry.

The dogs pant at Graham’s feet. One of them scratches at his leg with one dirty paw.

“Down, Heathcliff,” Graham murmurs. “Down.”

He unlocks the door and leaves it open behind him.

They call him Bill in the press, which is better than Cockroach, but worse than the Invisible Man. He’d tried to get that one started a while back. It didn’t catch on. Not even Tattlecrime would pick it up. So it’s Bill, Bill, Buffalo Bill, because they think he _skins_ his _humps_. There’s a thought that would’ve made him shudder in his early days. They think he fucks them. Disgusting.

The skin grafts aren’t perfect, but they’ll do. At least until Bill gets his hands on the only skin that matters. He’s killed his way through a long line of Dr. Lecter’s school friends by now- the optometrist, the anesthesiologist, the osteopath- but the plastic surgeon was the first one he tracked down, and the only one who had cut him a deal. He’d do the grafting. Bill would do the skinning. Neither would ask any questions.

It’s not a bad arrangement.

He’s close now, closer than he’s ever been before. Dr. Harcourt the endocrinologist had pointed him to Coventry before Bill broke his back, and in Coventry he had followed the trail all the way out here, and here, _finally,_ he has his answer.

The farmhouse windows are still lit. The door is still open where Will Graham had gone through.

Bill expects the door to close before he gets there. It doesn’t. It yawns open like a wide, inviting mouth, and he can smell the scent of stewing meat. He hesitates on the threshold, just for a moment.

The door opens on a mudroom with dirt-streaked floors and empty dog dishes. Expensive wool coats hang lankly off the walls like shadows pinned in place. Farther in, beyond the mudroom, Bill can see light spilling out into the hall. Distant paws click-clack on a kitchen floor.

Will Graham leans out from the kitchen and looks at him. Bill’s skin would prickle if it retained any sensation. At this distance, and from this angle, Graham looks very pale and very small. The light gleaming off his glasses hides his eyes. He’s wearing black.

“How long do you plan on standing out there, Frederick?” Graham’s lip twitches in sheepish amusement. Almost like the man he used to be. “Come in. I’m glad to see you.”

Bill steps forward suddenly, convulsively, as though to prove he could move all along. He shuts the door behind him and at once becomes aware of how warm it is inside, and how very cold he had been until now. The wind whistles through the cracks and weak places of the house, making it groan and settle with the effort of holding back the elements.

“I’m here for Hannibal Lecter,” he says, feeling acutely aware of his lisp.

“I know,” says Graham. “I know.”

He steps out into the hall, wiping his hands off on an ash gray kitchen towel. Two large black dogs lope after him, panting slightly and nosing at Graham’s pockets. He offers one of them a bite of something and it takes it delicately in its jaws before wandering away to gnaw on its prize.

“You’ve been expecting me?” Bill steps forward and, in spite of himself, catches a glimpse of his own bandaged face in the hall mirror. Featureless but for a slit across the mouth and two neat holes where his eyes stare out from behind his sunglasses. He looks like some decaying relic from a museum. Night of the living dead. Brains pulled out through the nose.

Graham shakes his head. “No. Honestly I . . . I didn’t think you’d still be alive.”

“That makes two of us,” says Bill, feeling a strange, bubbly surge of pride that he’s surprised Will Graham. “What kept you alive, huh? After all this time?”

“Divine providence,” A tired smile spreads across Graham’s face. “The infinite complexities of the universe. Fate.”

“Hannibal Lecter.”

“Hannibal Lecter.”

“He’s here,” Bill closes the distance between them and stares into the pits of Graham’s eyes. “I know he is.”

“What makes you think that, Frederick?” says Graham. Bill hears a kettle begin whistling high and sharp in the kitchen. “Stay a while. We’ll have dinner together.”

“I’m not here to eat.”

“I’m not asking.”

Graham turns his back on him- _he’s not scared of me,_ Bill thinks, feeling insane- and returns to the kitchen. The whistling of the kettle sputters into silence. The dogs begin to circle and sniff at Bill’s legs.

Bill shuffles forward, keeping his weight on his cane. The kitchen light spills out into the hallway and makes his eyes water when he passes through it to get to the sitting room. It’s a narrow space, sparse and smelling faintly of some earthy, masculine scent. The fireplace is lit, but burning low. Another dog lies on its side on an old fur rug before the fire.

The table is in the living room, and that surprises him. Bill knows that Hannibal Lecter has a way he likes to do things. An aesthetic sensibility that governs over all other human urges. No beliefs in him, no faith, no philosophy or loyalty. Only an aesthetic to which he adheres. The table in the living room doesn’t fall in line with that. It’s dark wood, very old and scratched, standing opposite the candlelit windows that look out over the moor. There’s only one chair.

“Is it true, then?” says Graham from the kitchen. His voice is muffled behind the wall. “What they’re saying in the press?”

He comes out with a plate of bread and two bowls, both plain wood and both steaming. Bill stands stiffly by the wall and waits for Graham to drag up a second chair from the corner. “No,” he says. Then, because he can’t help himself, “Why, what are they saying?”

Graham sets their bowls down and gestures for Bill to sit. “They say you like to skin your humps.”

“I don’t fuck them,” Bill says sharply. He drops into his seat too hard and coughs. It’s a wet, nasty sound in the back of his throat. “That’s an insidious- _hrrk-_ that’s an insidious, degrading rumor that Freddie Lounds made up to discredit me. It’s not true.”

“Then you _are_ Buffalo Bill,” says Graham. He picks up his spoon. “I wasn’t sure at first. But I see it now.”

Bill looks down at his bowl. He can smell it even through ruined nostrils. Braised beef stew with onions, mushrooms, small chunks of King Edward potato. It smells good. Very good. It makes Bill feel sick to his stomach.

His hands clench and unclench in his lap. _Interior. Farmhouse. Night._

“You must be horribly burned beneath those bandages,” Graham continues. He tears a piece of bread off the loaf and dips it into the stew, watching it soak with a thoughtful look on his face. “That’s why you take their skins, isn’t it? To graft them onto your own body? Don’t you feel like some sort of Frankenstein?”

Graham’s skin looks pale and leprous in the firelight. Nothing like Hannibal’s skin. Bill clicks his teeth together and leans forward, squinting with his one good eye. “I don’t know, Mr. Graham. How _do_ I feel?”

He can’t see Graham’s eyes behind his glasses. He watches as Graham takes a bite of bread and chews it thoughtfully, not answering.

“I’ve had a hell of a time tracking you down,” Bill continues. “You’re always moving from place to place. Usually it’s your standard of living that gives you away.”

“Does this look like a high standard of living?”

“I admit it surprised me to find you living here.”

Bill leans back in his chair and looks down at his bowl once again. The smell of it makes him nauseous. He wonders why Graham picked stew of all things tonight; one of the few things Bill can still eat. He picks up his spoon and struggles through a few mouthfuls of beef and mushroom. It tastes better than it smells.

_Interior. Farmhouse. Night._

He’s here for a reason.

“Tell me where he is,” Bill says flatly. A statement, not a question. “Tell me what happened to him.”

He looks from his bowl, still steaming, to Graham, smiling at him from across the table. The candlelight reflected in Graham’s glasses make his eyes look like two twin flames. “I didn’t eat him, Frederick,” he says, amused.

Bill’s mouth twitches. He gestures vaguely with his spoon. “You expect me to believe this is beef, then?”

“The very best. Well,” Graham admits, with a small shrug, “the best that a Coventry meat market can provide. Nothing more repellant in this world than English food, but with a cut of braising beef and a little patience you can make a decent stew,” He shakes his head, still smiling. “It’s been a while since I’ve eaten . . . properly . . . Frederick. In fact, it’s been almost a year.”

“Almost a year,” Bill repeats dully. He scrapes his spoon along the bottom of the bowl and fishes out a bit of potato. He stares at it bleakly and wonders if Graham is lying.

Something shatters. Bill looks sharply up at the ceiling, dropping his spoon and rising half out of his chair. “What was that?” he snaps. “I heard- upstairs, there was-”

“What?” Graham laughs. “What did you hear? Do you think I have a mad wife in the attic, Frederick? Sit down.”

“You-”

“Sit down, Frederick,” repeats Graham, and Bill can hear in his tone that he’s not asking. “You’re in over your head.”

Bill’s hands are twitching. He can hear his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, the wind outside, the breath of sleeping dogs. He can almost feel Hannibal’s skin peeling in his hands like the rind of an orange.

He sits down. Slowly, with his eyes on Graham all the while, he works his fingers into the bandages around his face and pulls them apart, just enough to bare his yellowed teeth.

“Good man,” says Graham. He taps his spoon on the edge of his bowl. “Go on. There’s nothing else to eat for miles.”

Bill hisses derisively through his teeth and spoons up a little more broth. He knocks it back quickly and sharply, like a bird, and he feels like a skeleton swallowing wine. Like it’ll go right through him and stain his bones red. “You with a wife,” he says hoarsely, his throat still rough from the burn. “I never could reconcile it, you know.”

“Well, you were never a very good therapist, were you, Frederick?”

“I suppose it was inevitable, after Ms. Hobbs didn’t let you play the part of the avenging hero. The _father,_ ” Bill leans in. “Do you think your stepson still has nightmares about you? Do you think he dreams about you coming in his bedroom window at night, killing him, eating him?”

Graham says nothing.

“He’d have nightmares about me,” says Bill. “I guarantee it. If I ever paid him a visit.”

“You wouldn’t have it in you, Frederick,” says Graham. His voice is very quiet. “You’re not a killer. You’re a pretender. That’s all you’ll ever be. A cuckoo in the nest.”

“What, like you?” Bill grinds his teeth together. “Pretending to be a family man? Pretending that women did it for you, huh?”

Graham doesn’t quite flinch, but Bill sees his jaw clench and knows he’s struck a nerve. “I wasn’t pretending.”

The floorboards creaking upstairs. Footsteps, heavy and shuffling. Dragging. Bill can’t sweat anymore but he feels like he should. It feels like something under his skin is leaking.

“There were never any men before Hannibal,” says Graham. He drags his spoon though the bowl, gazing down at the rippling broth. “I never wanted men. To tell you the truth, Frederick, I’m unsure if I even want men now.”

“Never?” Bill’s laugh is more like a cough. “Do you expect me to believe that too?”

Graham’s hand falls still. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe not never,” he admits. “When I was a kid, there was . . . we had a VHS player. I must’ve been . . .” He trails off thoughtfully, thinking. “Ten. I must’ve been ten, the first time I saw Daniel Day-Lewis. That might’ve been something.”

There’s a real smile, then, or the shadow of one. Bill doesn’t like to see it. Smiling doesn’t suit Will Graham. He looks a little too boyish, a little too Norman Bates.

“Whatever happened to Daniel Day-Lewis?” Graham asks suddenly.

Bill’s spoon pauses halfway to his mouth. “Excuse me?”

“Well, you don’t see him anymore, do you,” says Graham. He takes off his glasses, and behind them, his eyes are very tired, very dark. He breathes on the lenses before polishing them on his sleeve. “Didn’t he kill himself?”

Bill almost laughs at that. “He didn’t kill himself,” he says, incredulous. “I heard his last movie ruined him. He looked too deep into a character’s mind and couldn’t come back out again. Not right away.”

“I can understand that,” says Graham quietly. He puts his glasses back on. “I remember _Phantom Thread._ The whole movie feels sick, like watching something die. It is a wasting disease.”

“I thought it was pretentious,” says Bill.

Graham holds his gaze. “I thought you would’ve liked it,” he says testily. “You’re a tailor, now. Of a kind.”

The floorboards creak overhead, just once. Something drips onto the table between them. Something dark and watery, like beef stew.

“You want to see Hannibal Lecter,” says Graham flatly.

Bill nods. He can feel his hands beginning to shake.

_Interior. Farmhouse. Night._

Graham wants to kill Frederick Chilton so badly that his stomach flutters and his mouth feels dry. He can’t eat him. Not now that he swallowed the mushrooms, infecting him, poisoning his stomach lining. Killing him would only be an indulgence.

Besides. Perhaps Bill could hold the knife.

It would be an ignoble end to Hannibal Lecter, but still. Not without merit.

So Graham takes him upstairs. Slowly, because the stairs creak. Slowly, because the wind is still howling outside, and the frightened animal in the back of Graham’s mind is still listening for cars. Slowly, because Bill walks with a cane, and each step is a little question, a little answer.

Graham imagines himself turning around, shoving Bill hard, watching him twitch at the base of the stairs. Usually Hannibal watches Will’s diet, keeps him lean and trim and fed only on what Hannibal has provided. But it’s been a lean season, and he’s slipping. He feels like he’ll eat anything now, like a feral dog.

It’s tempting. Even with the poison in Bill’s veins, it’s tempting.

The upstairs hall smells like beef stew and vomit, and a heavy, cloying sweetness like rotting lilacs. The ceiling is sharply slanted; all the ceilings up here are. Above them, only roof and open sky. If Graham had a mind to he could put his hand through, claw himself up onto the rooftop and sit there like a gargoyle, looking out over the blackened moor.

There’s a room at the end of the hall. Graham closes his hand on the doorknob. “He’s in here,” he says. “You’ll never have a better chance than this.”

He turns the knob. Behind him, Bill’s breath catches.

The room inside is dark and fever hot, silent but for the wind outside and the sound of labored breathing. The sickly sweet scent of lilac is stronger now, as is the smell of bile. Bill takes a sudden step back, his hand jumping to his mouth. “COVID?” he croaks. “It must be. It smells like death in there.”

Graham laughs. “Is that your best guess? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. No, Frederick, it’s not COVID. Go inside and have a look for yourself.”

Bill isn’t looking at him. He stares straight ahead, hesitating in the doorway. Graham is just wondering how many doorways Bill’s hesitated in in his life when Bill walks forward, pushing past Graham into the room. Graham follows him and closes the door behind.

Hannibal Lecter is lying just where Graham left him- in an old four-poster, up to his neck in furs and faded quilts. He’s sleeping, but he must have stirred not long ago. One arm is splayed across his many pillows like a broken wing, and Graham can see from the lumps in the bedding that Hannibal’s body has curled in on itself, fetal. He’s pale and sweating, breathing hoarse, rattling breaths. Dried herbs and flowers hang from every wall but the smell of urine and vomit remains unmasked. A broken plate of beef stew lies discarded on the floor, spilled from a clumsy hand.

“Is he dying?” says Bill, entranced. The solitary window is closed against the wind but still the curtains stir, just barely brushing Bill’s ankle as he moves to stand over Hannibal’s sleeping form.

“No,” says Graham, smiling. “He ate something that disagreed with him. That’s all.”

He walks around to the other side of the bed and touches the back of his hand to Hannibal’s forehead. Warm, very warm, and sticky enough to leave a shine on Graham’s hand when he removes it. “I like him like this,” he murmurs, as Bill stares. “Don’t you think he looks like Daniel Day-Lewis?”

Bill’s gloved hand hovers uncertainly over Hannibal’s shoulder. “How,” he says, then stops. He clears his throat. “How often do you . . . do this?”

 _Don’t you know Alana’s in London? He would kill her if I don’t,_ thinks Graham. What he says instead is, “Whenever I want to, Frederick. He rolls over for it like a lamb.”

Bill’s hand lowers to his side. He grips his cane firmly and says nothing.

“It’s mushrooms, usually,” says Graham. “That’s how Hannibal prefers it. Sometimes I’ll use poisons, oils . . . whatever I can find, in whatever part of the world we happen to be. Never enough to kill him,” he adds, in a low voice. “Only enough to turn his mind off for a while. Relax him. Hannibal’s problem is that he’s too much in his own head.”

“And yours?”

Graham grinds his teeth bitterly. “Well, I’m too much in everyone else’s, Frederick. You should know that.”

Bill swallows and looks back down at the body. Graham, annoyed, crosses the room to the dresser and slides out the top drawer.

“Here,” he says, producing a hunting knife. Bone handle, blade as clean and sharp as the day Hannibal carved it. Graham offers it to Bill handle first. “Like I said, you’ll never get a better chance.”

He can tell Bill’s considering it, torn between interest and indecision. Letting _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_. It’s all Graham can do to keep himself from leaping on him, forcing the knife into his hands, into his throat, anywhere. Someone should to do it. Eventually, someone will _have_ to do it.

Will Graham is only just starting to realize that it won’t be him.

Graham takes one step forward. Bill takes one step back.

“You’re as good as anyone, Frederick,” says Graham, his eyes narrowing. “Why not you? You do it. The great Buffalo Bill.”

“Uh-uh, Mr. Graham,” says Bill shakily, raising his hands. There’s a knowing smugness in his voice that reminds Graham of cages and hospitals and bad, bad memories. “What’s this about, really? You think I don’t know that you’ll kill me the moment I’m done?”

“I may have killed you already,” Graham sneers. “You’ve got three minutes. Go on. _Do it._ ”

Bill’s hands waver. Graham knows he’s remembering what he’s eaten. Maybe he’s feeling the first effects. The nausea, the intestinal distress. The rising bile. Graham tosses the knife onto the bed and Bill makes no move to pick it up. “Look at you,” he snarls. “I’ve shat out better men than you. I gave him to you on a plate and you can’t do it.”

Bill convulses sharply, his hands jumping to clutch his stomach. “You can’t do it either,” he croaks, and that’s what sends Graham over the edge.

He hurls himself at Bill and almost misses him; Bill’s already dropped, coughing wetly into his hand, his body curling in on itself like a shriveled spider. Graham stumbles over him and, blind with fury, kicks him very hard in the face. Bill’s head snaps to the side and he falls still, a dark, discolored stain spreading across his bandages. Graham can hear his feeble breathing.

“I can’t even eat you!” Graham grips Bill by the collar, shakes him. “I can’t even _eat you!_ ”

Bill slumps back to the floor, unconscious. Graham straightens up and brushes off his clothes, looks around him. Apart from the knife on the bed and the rumpled rug by the door, nothing might have changed at all.

He hooks his arms up under Bill’s shoulders and drags him out into the hall. He doesn’t bother shutting the door behind him.

Hannibal’s not going anywhere anyway.

It’s a long two hours before Graham gets back upstairs. A long two hours in which the dogs are shut up, the bags are packed, the limp and breathing body of Frederick Chilton is locked in the boot of Graham’s car. He’ll dump him somewhere, anywhere. It doesn’t matter anymore. Hannibal would want him left alive, and even if Graham broke both his legs he’d still come crawling back, dragging himself hand over hand to the farmhouse.

Better that he finds nothing when he gets there.

Upstairs the sickly-sweet smell of flowers and bile is now tinged with the smell of Bill’s blood. Graham wrinkles his nose at it, digs around in the dresser until he finds a candle. “Not your fault,” he mumbles idly, half to Hannibal and half to himself. “Not your fault. Not at all.”

It will be hard to move Hannibal in this state, but that’s not Graham’s fault either. If Hannibal didn’t have his heart so firmly set on being a father, and if he hadn’t paid such loving attention to the Verger boy all these years, they wouldn’t have to do this at all.

But Graham doesn’t want to kill Alana. Not yet, anyway. And he doesn’t want to steal Morgan away.

His hand shakes as he lights the candle. Her last child- the only child Graham had ever fathered- had been cut from her belly and incubated in swine. It had died there.

The match is burning down.

Graham watches it for a moment too long before flicking it out. “Shouldn’t have tried to let him kill you,” he says, turning around. “I suppose that’s my job, isn’t it?”

Hannibal doesn’t move. Still sleeping, still sick. Graham walks around the side of the bed and leans over him. So often in the past it had been Hannibal who’d forced tainted food down Graham’s throat. Now he was this sick and feeble thing, in need of nurturing. Pleading with every breath to be made worse.

Graham touches his cool, dry hand to Hannibal’s forehead. Moves his hand down to cup his cheek, cradle his thin neck. His thumb touches the hollow of Hannibal’s throat.

“Look at you,” Graham murmurs. “All flayed open.”

It was a terrible, beautiful thing, perhaps unique to them. The desire to fill each other up with poisons until they were sick with it, until there was no recourse but the syringe, the bone saw, the down pillow and the fur comforter. Nothing for it but to hold each other down with firm hands and say, _you’re sick. You’re sick, and you’re too much in your own head. Now I will make you helpless._

It was hard to think of Hannibal as helpless, and that, of course, was the thrill of it. Graham smooths his hand down Hannibal’s throat, down past his collarbone to his breast. He can feel the heart beating behind the ribs. He imagines shoving his hand through, digging his dirty fingernails into the pulsing muscle. Pulling it out and eating it raw. _Helpless._

Graham leans down and kisses Hannibal’s unmoving mouth. Gently, so as not to wake him. It was funny, in a way, that Hannibal had nurtured him so attentively. Broken him with bright lights and brain fever and built him back up into something like a caregiver. A nurturer himself, groomed not into the mad boy-murderer the tabloids liked to write about, but a partner. A companion in fatherhood. Someone who’s every chance at fatherhood had been violated beyond repair, until only Hannibal remained.

“Will,” groans a voice, still rough with sleep. “Will.”

“Shhh,” Graham whispers. “Lie still, and don’t think. Let me take care of you.”

His hand moves down, down beneath the blankets. Hannibal shifts beneath him, barely conscious. He groans long and low, almost a sob, when Graham touches him.

“You won’t remember a thing I say, will you,” Graham says softly. His strokes are firm, almost clinical. He wonders if Hannibal ever touched him this way, when he was brainsick and impotent, desperate to be grounded. “You won’t remember any of this at all.”

He kisses Hannibal again, this time enjoying the slack mouth, the heavy breaths. Hannibal whines, his eyelids fluttering. His hand closes weakly on the edge of Graham’s shirt.

Graham knows precisely how it feels to be raw and exposed. Peeled open, laid out on a kitchen counter for preparation. He squeezes his hand a little too tightly and Hannibal shrinks away from him. An instinctive reaction. _Like a little animal,_ Graham thinks in wonder. Still, Hannibal is a very patient man, and when he made Graham, he gave him a little of that patience.

This indignity, this intrusion to match the thousand upon thousand intrusions with which Hannibal had shown Graham his love, could last a very long time if Graham willed it.

Better to end it now.

When Graham wrings his seed out of him it comes as a sad, pathetic spasm, barely a twitch. Graham wipes his hand off on the sheets before standing. He kisses Hannibal once more, this time on the forehead. He can hear the change in Hannibal’s breathing. A deeper sleep now, more restful.

He’ll go and dump the body later. Let Bill crawl back on his hands and knees; he’ll find the farmhouse there, and no inhabitants. Graham will be gone. Hannibal, sick and barely standing, will be gone.

But for now Graham sits on the edge of the bed, and listens to Hannibal breathe.


End file.
